MMA in India is now the Super Fight League

MMA hits mainstream audience in India

Best Gym Wars India Fights # 1

We are on FHM [oct 2011 issue]

Tigers continues to promote MMA the best possible way in India with great coverage in the october 2011 issue of FHM [India]. Page 109 has Daniel Isaac on a full page colour feature and pages 110 and 111 have a nice write-up on on our work , our team , our fighters and our international achievements.

New Breed of Warriors Jan-Sept 2011 : Top Ten MMA fighters of Tigers Gym India[in random order]

SURJE GURUNG 69 KGS


ANUP KUMAR 58 KGS

BODI RHEMA 82 KGS

MOHD SHAHID 79 KGS

RICKY RANJEET SINGH 78 KGS

CHAITANYA GAWLI 80 KGS

SUSOVAN GHOSH 54 KGS

NADEEM FAROOQUI 60 KGS

MASTVEER SINGH 85 KGS

BHARAT KHANDARE 69 KGS

The Godfather of MTV Roadies is training MMA at Evolution Mixed Martial Arts Mumbai

Rajiv Lakshman , twin brother of Raghu Ram [of MTV Roadies fame] and creative head of entertainment at Colosceum Media is training mixed martial arts with the pioneer of MMA in India , Daniel Isaac. Daniel says that Rajiv is a fast learner and is naturally very strong , At this point Rajiv is working on his mma striking , wrestling and takedowns with Daniel and Jitendra , soon he will be working on his bjj and submissions with bjj and mma fighter Alan "the bull" Fenandes. Rajiv is a hardcore mma fan and supporter of the Tigers mma fight team, he also makes it a point to take time out from his super busy schedule to watch live mma action at the gym wars mma fights in Mumbai.

The BJJ-India Connection part 1

We we began promoting mma in the year 2000 it all started with our own experiments on the mat , we had absolutely no idea how to apply any chokehold or submission properly , all we had access to was hundreds and hundreds of bjj and mma dvds , everytime i visited a foreign country i made it a point to pickup dvds and more dvds. In those days all we did was watch the dvds and experiement. There was this old kusthi akhara in bhagur [at the outskirts of devlali , nasik] and a friend of my fathers offered the facility for us to train with our team. A few weeks later and the local kusthi wrestlers found us doing something they thought was "wrong wrestling" and offered to show us the correct moves , when we told them that this wasnt regular wrestling they started to gather together and watch us do our own version of submission wrestling, soon the 'watching' changed to "jeers" and after a couple of weeks we had a whole group of the local wrestlers sitting around laughing and watching our "funny" wrestling sessions until one evening when i invited some of the ring-leaders to come join us in a grappling session , so the toughest looking guy with bulging muscles and cauliflower ears stepped onto the mat while his fellow wrestlers cheered him on , a crowd gathered around to see what would happen , my adopted brother alan fenandes who had watched a few bjj videos and knew just about one gullotine and maybe half an arm-bar took on the challenge , as expected the wrestler charged in and took alan to the ground but to his surprise got caught with an arm-in gullotine , wrestlers usually pop their head out naturally when they rush in for the takedown but rather than tapping [since they didnt know how to tap] the wrestler went to sleep when alan tightened the choke , after a few minutes of reviving the wrestler and a couple of words exchanged between both groups the wrestlers figured out that this style of wrestling was definately effective and worth trying out , this is how our journey with bjj began. After this we temporarily had a group of the local wrestlers training with us , I would say that those days definately benefited our team since grappling with those wrestlers helped us understand the fundamentals of wrestling and how important it was for our mma game , some of them got hooked and and joined the team - bharat "beast" khandare is one of those wrestlers , while the others returned to their age old tradition of kusthi wrestling and kusthi dangals. Unfortunately i heard later on that the owner of the wrestling facility wasnt too keen on his boys shifting over to bjj or mma and gave his boys a taking to , sad but true otherwise im sure many of those wrestlers could have become prospective grapplers representing India. Picture above : two of the wrestlers that began training with us but later left to pursue their kusthi career.[contd in part 2]

I stand alone with an army of friends ... we will overcome

... And miles to go before I sleep , the journey seems long and difficult with many hurdles and critics standing in my path , but I will strive to push forward and fight the good fight.

Farmer boy training mma

A few weeks ago , this farmer guy named sandeep walks into tigers mma in nasik and wants to know whats happening here , we tell him its an mma gym - he cant figure out what we're talking about , anyways our front desk guy shows him around the place and hes interested seing all the training gear and the posters of alan on the walls , can i become like him ? he asks - referring to alans poster , why not replies the front desk guy , sandeep signs up frankly not knowing what hes getting into , a few weeks later i hold the pads for him and the guy has some raw power , seriously this farmer boy has no fight experience whatsoever , not even wrestling but hes strong , pretty strong , this is the kind of raw talent that rural india posseses , here him doing beginner level pads with me , pretty awesome if you ask me , thanks again to tayde for filming the video and for permitting me to bring my cam / mobile into the training area.

2010 MMA India Re-cut super highlight video

Hope you guys enjoy this my latest tigers team mma HL video , it features some of Indias top mma / muay thai fighters competing at mma / kickboxing shows all over the world.